suppose I have the string: "a=13 ytr hg a=15 bry dga=19gg a=998 p" I want to get all the occurences of the pattern /a=.* / (into an array) But I want only the expression a=*. and that's all (gready selection) In this case I want to get as the result an array that contain: @result=("a=13","a=15","a=998") How can I do that ?